A question about Guards & Wards

[Zkenic]

So the spell Guards and Wards states that it needs to be cast 100 times over a 9 hour period, each time costing 5000 gold. I know the spell is an rp spell, so I am curious on how I am supposed to rp this spell. Is that 9 hour period a real life period, so a character that could cast Guards and Wards 10 a rest could do it personally over 100minutes of casting and resting? Is it 9 hours rp wise, so wizards should only have one "rest" of spells, so you need 10 wizards that all can cast the spell 10 times? I like the rp that the spell provides, and am interesting in pursuing an rp use of the spell, but I want to rp it properly.

[chad878262]

I'm not sure if Guards & Wards was ever fully finished. I think the *intent* was for it to be a functioning spell that guilds could use to protect their guildhalls from intrusion. However, to the best of my knowledge the decision was made to allow folks to continue working with DMs to RP how their guilds are protected both from magical and mundane intrusion.

[zhazz]

I am unsure on this. But I do believe it to be the latter. You need several casters to focus the efforts together over a short period. Otherwise they might as well just remove the restriction on needing to cast spells to build the Guards and Wards, as a single character could do it in short order by just spamming appropriate spells.

As to why it would only be 9 hours of IG time, I can only speculate. It seems far too little time in my opinion.
At least when considering that in tabletop gaming, if you want to create a permanent teleportation circle (I know, not quite the same), you need to cast the spell Teleportation Circle on the same spot, every day, for a full year. Multiple casters working together can then reduce this time. E.g. two casters would halve the time, while six casters would reduce it to two months.

[chad878262]

As to why it would only be 9 hours of IG time, I can only speculate.

My guess would be this likely has to do with the fact that, at the time, the server would reset after 9 hours and perhaps there was a limitation on saving the number of casts completed in between resets.

I don't know either as this spell was only tested at a very high level in QC and never to full completion to my knowledge (like with anything else even back then it was sometimes difficult to get multiple QC folks together to test all of the new content being delivered.)

[zhazz]

As to why it would only be 9 hours of IG time, I can only speculate.

My guess would be this likely has to do with the fact that, at the time, the server would reset after 9 hours and perhaps there was a limitation on saving the number of casts completed in between resets.

I don't know either as this spell was only tested at a very high level in QC and never to full completion to my knowledge (like with anything else even back then it was sometimes difficult to get multiple QC folks together to test all of the new content being delivered.)

That sound reasonble.

I don't see how it would be an issue storing the number of casts though. Maybe if the area itself tries to do the calculations? But the below seems like it shouldn't require much to implement.

1. Have a placeable object to facilitate exactly Wards and Guards spells
2. Players target the placed object with their spells, each cast increasing the casting count by one
3. Players can interact with the placeable to save the number of casts, adding it to the total in the database
4. Saving the casts to database, also resets casts stored on the placeable
5. When the area is loaded it checks the cast counter in the database, and applies Wards and Guards

Granted, I've only dabbled in the scripting side of NWN2. I find the interface for it horrendous to use